Historically, “property owners associations” referred to an organization comprised of owners of units in a real estate development, such as a residential housing, condominium or retirement community. Such associations were sometimes commonly referred to as “homeowners” associations. With the introduction of “property owners associations” into the real estate market several decades ago, a new set of challenges developed for those who needed to gather information about these associations in regards to real estate financing, refinancing, and sale/resale transactions. For example, a title company may desire information regarding the bylaws of the association and title of a home being sold or purchased whose owner is a member of the homeowners association. In another example, a real estate agent may desire information for a client (e.g., potential purchaser of a home which is owned by a member of a condominium association). Those that desire such information may be referred to herein as “requestors.” Information desired by requestors may range from general knowledge of the service assessment fees and amenities or services provided for the assessment fees, to more detailed and specific information regarding fee assessment account balances and legal activities in regards to the association bylaws, etc., and/or individual association members (e.g., property description).
Gathering this information has proven to be difficult and time consuming for the requestors as the typical property owners association is “managed” by a “management services provider” known in the industry as a “portfolio association management company.” These management companies typically manage between 5 and 500 property owner associations simultaneously. As the associations may change management companies often, keeping up with who is managing what property association is a challenge in itself. Even when the industry professional determines which management services company to contact, there is no standardization of information transfer in the industry. Couple this lack of consistency with the fact that the specifics of information required to be provided is determined by individual state statutes (e.g., deeds, by-laws, etc. have different requirements in different states), any attempt at regional or national standardization is unworkable.
Over the years, the association management industry has approached this dilemma by using pencil/paper/mail/fax methods, whereby the management company (or an association itself) would receive some sort of “request,” then manually process the request, and send it back (mail/fax/etc) to the requestor.
There has been limited automation in the association management market in that other third party companies have developed server-based or web-based methods to order, and/or process, these requests from requestors either to the association or to the management company. The limitation of these programs and existing protocols is that the “product” produced is the same from state to state, or nationally, even when the state statutory or regulatory requirements impose disparate and conflicting requirements as to the type of information or documents required to be delivered. A larger problem for the industry is that the web-based automated products being used require the requestors to contact another service provider directly, as opposed to being able to continue the work directly with the association and/or association management company. This interruption of the business relationship between the requestors and the association or the association management company results in loss efficiencies and continuity for both the requestors, as well as the associations and/or association management companies.
The problem has been exasperated as the role of property owner associations have expanded and in effect have become “community associations” due to the additional non-real estate property specific services offered. The dilemma has been how to use a single processing system, which will meet all existing (and all future) state statutes, as well as designed to deliver an ever-increasing “number of products,” without interrupting the business relationship between the requestors and the “community association” and/or association management companies. These products will be identified by different terms across the country, but are related to the same type of real estate and financial matters. Examples would be “resale disclosure packages,” “resale certifications,” “estoppel letters,” “status letters,” “statements of account,” “mortgage questionnaires,” “lender questionnaires,” “condominium certifications,” “planned area development (PUD) forms,” “rental applications,” “association governing documents,” “appraisal information,” “covenant compliance information,” “realtor listing information,” “occupancy ratios,” “annual disclosure reports,” “reserve studies,” “budgets,” “minutes,” and a multitude of additional “association related and/or state statute related reports, information and documents.”
Therefore, there is a need in the art for requestors to obtain data relating to “community associations” and to the members and the members' properties that are serviced by the association in a direct, efficient manner without the use of another third party service provider.